JulioPDX / terraform-ansible

Messing around with Terraform and Ansible

Terraform and Ansible

This is a quick example to see Terraform and Ansible working together.

Requirements

This example leverages Azure. A valid Azure account and az cli are required to run through this example.

1. Install Terrform
2. Install az cli
3. Authenticate to Azure using the CLI
4. git clone this repository

Python requirements

I like to use a virtual environment when leveraging Python. The only specific Python install we need is Ansible core and one galaxy collection.

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip3 install ansible-core
ansible-galaxy collection install cloud.terraform

Build the infrastructure

Run terraform apply to deploy the infrastructure.

❯ terraform apply
...
ansible_host.vm2: Refreshing state... [id=myVM2]
ansible_host.vm1: Refreshing state... [id=myVM1]

No changes. Your infrastructure matches the configuration.

Terraform has compared your real infrastructure against your configuration
and found no differences, so no changes are needed.

Apply complete! Resources: 0 added, 0 changed, 0 destroyed.

Outputs:

public_ip_address1 = "x.x.x.x"
public_ip_address2 = "x.x.x.x"
resource_group_name = "tf-rg"

The new feature here is the addition of the Ansible provider within our providers.tf file.

terraform {
  required_version = ">=0.12"

  required_providers {
    azurerm = {
      source  = "hashicorp/azurerm"
      version = "~>2.0"
    }
    ansible = {
      source  = "ansible/ansible"
      version = "~>1.0.0"
    }
  }
}

provider "azurerm" {
  features {}
}

We can then use this provider to build new "resources" that are leveraged in future Ansible playbook runs.

# main.tf
resource "ansible_host" "vm1" {
  name   = azurerm_linux_virtual_machine.my_terraform_vm1.name
  groups = ["linux"]
  variables = {
    ansible_user     = "azureuser"
    ansible_password = "Super123!"
    ansible_host     = azurerm_linux_virtual_machine.my_terraform_vm1.public_ip_address
  }
}

resource "ansible_host" "vm2" {
  name   = azurerm_linux_virtual_machine.my_terraform_vm2.name
  groups = ["linux"]
  variables = {
    ansible_user     = "azureuser"
    ansible_password = "Super123!"
    ansible_host     = azurerm_linux_virtual_machine.my_terraform_vm2.public_ip_address
  }
}

The portions above set a few variables required to connect to remote nodes when using Ansible. The inventory.yml file then leverages the cloud.terraform collection to build an inventory from the Terraform state.

ansible-galaxy collection install cloud.terraform

# inventory.yml
---
plugin: cloud.terraform.terraform_provider

ansible-inventory -i inventory.yml --graph --vars

❯ ansible-inventory -i inventory.yml --graph --vars
@all:
  |--@ungrouped:
  |--@linux:
  |  |--myVM1
  |  |  |--{ansible_host = x.x.x.x}
  |  |  |--{ansible_password = Super123!}
  |  |  |--{ansible_user = azureuser}
  |  |--myVM2
  |  |  |--{ansible_host = x.x.x.x}
  |  |  |--{ansible_password = Super123!}
  |  |  |--{ansible_user = azureuser}

Once this is all provisioned, we can point our playbook to the linux group.

# play.yml
---
- name: Checking cloud connectivity
  gather_facts: false
  hosts: linux
  become: true
  tasks:

  - name: Install NGINX
    ansible.builtin.package:
      name: nginx
      state: present